Monday, February 28, 2011

Feeling your unfelt emotions

One of the main reasons I use EFT with myself is to help me feel emotions I don't want to feel, emotions that are too painful to feel. I often tap for the courage to be able to feel certain emotions. I notice if I tap with even the slightest hint of resistance, or wanting whatever I'm feeling to be gone, the emotional charge doesn't budge, if anything it gets even stronger! If I keep my intention simple and allow the energy of the emotion to move and soften up, as much as it can in that moment, I feel huge relief and the energy of that emotion starts to circulate. The movement of energy nourishes us and feels good, energy in its natural state flows. It is we who stop, or have the ability to stop the flow of energy but we can also help our energy move again.

Antonio Damasio says ~ We experience because we have the ability to feel. Ivor Browne says ~ Trauma is unexperienced experience. We can safely conclude then that feeling our experiences will keep us healthy and keep our energies flowing.

Many people flinch when they hear the word trauma, but if there is some thing or some one who still bothers you when you think about them now, the experience has been traumatic for you in some way, shape or form. Whenever we are faced with a threat (and that will be different for everyone depending on circumstances, your age, resources available to you and how you felt at the time) we have the ability to not feel it fully, in other words we can freeze the experience. But at some stage we will need to discharge this frozen experience/energy or tension builds up in our nervous system, and we'll start to see the effects on our health.

Ivor Browne says until we can experience the experience, it remains as the 'frozen present' and therefore cannot be processed for long term memory storage. This helps explain why we can feel overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, worn out, like we're at the end of our tether as we try and try to get off the merry go round of a seemingly never ending cycle. We can feel ashamed that we're still upset, stuck, or can't move on, and maybe others are pressuring us to 'get over it' too.

Many of us have a list of 'good' emotions and most probably a much longer list of 'bad' emotions. Whenever we feel the 'bad' emotions, we want to move away from feeling them, it's a natural instinct to want to move away from anything that is causing you pain. But herein lies our healing. The reasons we determine certain emotions are 'bad' are many. We may even think we're 'bad' people for having them in the first place, so we'll disown those emotions and stuff them somewhere where the sun don't shine. A very common emotion on the 'bad' list is anger. Anger, when not felt, can turn to rage. Its main purpose is to protect us, to say No. It's a very powerful emotion and when repressed or suppressed, puts enormous pressure on us to keep going and pretend as if nothing is wrong.

Tapping the karate chop/side of hand point (small intestine meridian) is great for unfreezing our experiences and it also dissolves psychological reversal. The small intestine is where we assimilate what we digest, and that includes experiences as well as food. Tap continuously on the karate chop (or tap both sides together if you like) and just let loose on how you feel about the emotion of anger (or any emotion you find difficult to feel). It could go something like this:

4 comments:

Ah, Noreen, once again exactly what I need & need to be working on- precisely on time!

My difficulty has been lately, just what you describe as resistance (above). I feel I'm feeling my feelings! But when I tap sometimes, I become instantly drained, like I've gone off the road into a muddy ditch! Any additional tips on how to move through the hesitance? It seems at one time I was better at finding a way, but the past several months, when its there IT STAYS THERE!

Melissa, my first thought was what would happen if you dissolved that particular feeling/issue that you're tapping on? Would it require action on your part that you're not ready to take/don't feel safe enough yet? It seems your system is protecting you from something that you're not ready for or are in two minds about? Try tapping 'both sides' of the story, and see if you feel a shift and tapping alternately between 'Yes I do' 'No, I don't'. The 'do' part you can fill in :-)Take care x

Anger can protect and set healthy boundaries for us, it allows us to say No. When we try to suppress it and don't allow ourself to express it, our body will do the expressing for us. If we allow our self to feel angry, it'll flow and dissipate naturally. This video is really good Trisha and well timed :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W16x6u6h5E&tracker=False&NR=1

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